Movie Recommendation System
The 12-session plan
Introduction & setup Colab, Hugging Face, MovieLens, Claude for assistance. Discuss the recommendation problem, its applications, and the Netflix Prize as a hook. HW: hand-drawn wireframes + feature list.
Load & explore the data Review wireframes. Show where to download the dataset and how to upload into Colab. Load movies.csv and ratings.csv, explore shape/columns/dtypes. HW: write 3 observations about the raw data.
Clean the movies data Extract year from title, split genres into a list, move articles ("The", "A") from the end of titles to the front, investigate duplicate titles. HW: run the equivalent checks on ratings.csv — missing values, duplicate (user, movie) pairs, confirm every movieId exists in movies.csv, count unique users.
Frequently asked questions
Who is this project a great fit for?+
BlueRobins projects are designed for curious students in Grades 3-12 who want to build. No prior experience is needed — mentors start wherever your child is and grow the challenge as they grow.
What does a typical session look like?+
Your child meets 1-on-1 with their mentor every week over Google Meet. Programs run 16 sessions of 45 minutes each. Sessions are hands-on from minute one — building, designing, coding, writing, experimenting — with the mentor coaching live, asking great questions, and unlocking the next step.
What will my child build by the end?+
A finished project they're proud of and can show the world. Across 16 sessions, your child turns an ambitious idea into a working app, prototype, research write-up, portfolio, or published artifact. Every student finishes with a completion certificate signed by their mentor.
Why a free trial first?+
So your child can meet their mentor, get a feel for the project, and leave the call excited. The trial is a complimentary 1-on-1 free trial session — no credit card needed. After the trial, you decide if it's the right fit. Most families know within the first 15 minutes.